COVID-19—taking a stand

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#meta[ag-author]

Ian Narine

20200514034636

20200515

I don’t want to die.

I don’t want any of my fam­i­ly to die.

I don’t want you to die.

I don’t want any­one in the broad­er so­ci­ety to die.

Now that we are clear on where I stand let us al­so be clear that there are el­e­ments of those out­comes that we face every day that we can con­trol and there are el­e­ments that are en­tire­ly out­side of our con­trol. Yet every day all of us man­age the risks be­tween what we can con­trol and what we can­not con­trol and do so nor­mal­ly. It is part of life. We do not fear this and for many we re­ly on faith when cir­cum­stances get the bet­ter of us.

What we do fear is the risk of many of us dy­ing at the same time. We are wired to fear such out­comes be­cause in our so­cial evo­lu­tion a num­ber of per­sons dy­ing at the same time with­in a tribe or sect posed a risk to the very ex­is­tence of the group it­self. That there­fore was some­thing to avoid as much as pos­si­ble.

The role of the lead­ers of the tribe is to stand above the fear and to strive to find the ap­pro­pri­ate bal­ance. If un­script­ed deaths be­came un­avoid­able the lead­ers of the tribe has a de­lib­er­ate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect the con­tin­u­a­tion of the tribe by mak­ing judge­ment calls. So long as mul­ti­ple deaths do not put at risk the con­ti­nu­ity of the tribe the role of the leader is not to “save lives” but to “en­sure well be­ing” over the long term. A skewed ap­proach to the for­mer is mis­guid­ed and a mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of one’s role. A leader of a tribe can­not al­low the fear of death to leave the tribe in a worse place than be­fore be­cause that al­so places the tribe at risk. A leader will send troops in­to bat­tle but the ob­jec­tive is al­ways to se­cure longer term ob­jec­tives at the ex­pense of short term fears.

It is a moral oblig­a­tion on the part of each mem­ber of a tribe to try to ex­er­cise in­di­vid­ual re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on be­half of the col­lec­tive. The tribe will be bet­ter off as a re­sult. It is the eth­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the lead­er­ship to min­i­mize the fall­out for all mem­bers of the tribe, to do so eq­ui­tably and most im­por­tant­ly to en­sure that the net harm that comes from his or her cho­sen course of ac­tion is min­imised. The key word here is “net”.

Re-Open­ing

It is es­ti­mat­ed that 3.9 bil­lion peo­ple were at vary­ing times this year on lock down as a re­sult of at­tempts to stop the spread of the Covid-19 virus. That is more than half of the world’s pop­u­la­tion. Now that the peak wave of in­fec­tions have passed in many cas­es the dis­cus­sion has moved to how to re­open the economies of the world. Re­open­ing is nec­es­sary so as to en­sure the con­tin­ued and fu­ture well be­ing of these coun­tries.

T&T is at this junc­ture. Our ob­jec­tive was to de­cide on an in­fec­tion curve that we are will­ing to tol­er­ate and then bal­ance the risks as­so­ci­at­ed with that curve to en­sure that the “net” harm is as low as pos­si­ble.

The Gov­ern­ment has es­tab­lished that a phased re-open­ing is ap­pro­pri­ate, which for many, rep­re­sent a more than two month hia­tus from hav­ing ac­cess to an at­tempt at a liveli­hood. The re­al­i­ty though is that our liveli­hood will not re­turn to pre March 13 lev­els any­time soon.

It seems lost in the nar­ra­tive that in the ab­sence of a Gov­ern­ment most peo­ple faced with the spread of a virus of un­known con­ta­gion and dead­ly ef­fect would have tak­en steps to pro­tect them­selves. The sur­veys and anec­do­tal cell phone track­ing da­ta avail­able glob­al­ly shows that most peo­ple did that vol­un­tar­i­ly. Those that did not was os­ten­si­bly be­cause they could not have af­ford­ed to.

The State use of moral sua­sion such as “we are try­ing to save lives” was and re­mains un­nec­es­sary hy­per­bole. The ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens would be in­ter­est­ed in pre­serv­ing their own lives and that should be ob­vi­ous. Where Gov­ern­ments did func­tion was in tak­ing de­ci­sions to close schools, bars, restau­rants and places of con­gre­ga­tion. Our Gov­ern­ment has done so ef­fec­tive­ly. Those ac­tiv­i­ties would have re­duced the op­por­tu­ni­ty for the virus to spread and pro­vid­ed a mech­a­nism of sup­port to the cit­i­zens who were mind­ed to pro­tect them­selves.

The chal­lenge of course was that hav­ing tak­en the de­ci­sion to sus­pend cer­tain eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties the State has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to sup­port the fall­out from those sus­pend­ed ac­tiv­i­ties. Every­one has an eq­ui­table right to life and al­so to prop­er­ty and to earn a liv­ing. So hav­ing tak­en a de­ci­sion to pro­hib­it ac­tiv­i­ties for the “greater good” there was al­so a re­quire­ment to pro­vide for those af­fect­ed. This is a prin­ci­ple of eq­ui­ty. It is not some­thing that cit­i­zens and res­i­dents need­ed to qual­i­fy to ob­tain. Way back in ear­ly March I sug­gest­ed that the de­liv­ery of eco­nom­ic re­lief had to go hand in hand with the tim­ing of any lock­down pro­vi­sions. The truth is that we have failed mis­er­ably both in un­der­stand­ing the prin­ci­ple and in ex­e­cut­ing on what was the ba­sic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the State.

The ar­gu­ment re­gard­ing the cost to the State to pro­vide such sup­port is spu­ri­ous. In every sit­u­a­tion there are com­pet­ing needs and the role of lead­ers is to weight the com­pet­ing needs. The med­ical con­cern would be to un­der­stand both the in­ci­dence and the preva­lence of the virus. The eco­nom­ic con­cern would be to pro­vide sup­port while the med­ical con­struct is be­ing de­ter­mined. De­lays in es­tab­lish­ing the preva­lence of the virus car­ries an eco­nom­ic cost and this cost should not be borne by the cit­i­zens. A de­ci­sion to weigh on the side of the med­ical con­cerns re­quires the State to ac­cept the eco­nom­ic cost as­so­ci­at­ed with their de­ci­sion with­out com­plaint. It is in fact their de­ci­sion and their as­sess­ment of how best they are able to bal­ance the com­pet­ing needs.

It is un­con­scionable to ad­dress the med­ical con­cern while al­so fail­ing to recog­nise and call to ac­count the lack of abil­i­ty to es­tab­lish the preva­lence of the virus through ad­e­quate ramp up in test­ing. The med­ical of­fi­cials can­not get a free pass on this at the ex­pense of the eco­nom­ic and so­cial fall out of thou­sands of cit­i­zens. It is in­con­gru­ent that one can boast of ad­vanced plan­ning for the pan­dem­ic since Jan­u­ary and still tol­er­ate such an out­come.

Now we are on the verge of re-open­ing the econ­o­my, the awak­en­ing re­al­i­ty from the lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty on the med­ical side is the un­told fi­nan­cial cost that we will now be­gin to count. In avoid­ing the des­per­a­tion that goes with a lack of suf­fi­cient hos­pi­tal beds we have em­braced the des­per­a­tion of not hav­ing enough food and the men­tal an­guish of di­min­ished sav­ings and the loss of liveli­hoods. Not to men­tion that the bal­ance of prob­a­bil­i­ty is that we may have to do this all over again when “flu sea­son” hits lat­er in the year.

New Road

This des­per­a­tion will be re­flect­ed in a lev­el of anx­i­ety once a re­open­ing takes place. It is hu­man na­ture. We see this anx­i­ety in the form of “the hus­tle” around Christ­mas in­to Car­ni­val. A win­dow dur­ing which peo­ple try to max­i­mize the eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Start­ing since Mon­day, each phased re­open­ing will present such a win­dow and that al­so presents a risk of un­wind­ing all the at­tempts to shore up the med­ical side of the equa­tion as peo­ple try to off­set their eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances. The chal­lenge in­to next week is that we need to es­tab­lish a sys­tem of vol­un­tary com­pli­ance based on what is re­quired to main­tain our per­son­al safe­ty. There is no way that the State can po­lice the re­quire­ments for the next eigh­teen months with­out rolling back de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rights and free­doms. That in the con­text of a fail­ing econ­o­my is a recipe for dis­as­ter.

Our pro­tract­ed time­line car­ries the risk that vol­un­tary com­pli­ance can be over­tak­en by des­per­a­tion. If that were to hap­pen it would rep­re­sent an­oth­er pol­i­cy chal­lenge as it has the po­ten­tial to un­do all the sac­ri­fices of the past two months.

The bot­tom line is that T&T is in a very pre­car­i­ous eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion. We can­not sac­ri­fice the lives of ma­jor seg­ments of so­ci­ety and their next gen­er­a­tion be­cause of a de­ci­sion frame­work that is skewed. At­tend­ing to the well mean­ing voic­es of doc­tors and dis­ease spe­cial­ists and those with in­de­pen­dent wealth re­sults in de­ci­sion mak­ing that is out of touch with sig­nif­i­cant seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion.

We are em­bark­ing on a new eco­nom­ic road start­ing with sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of un­em­ployed in a high­ly lever­aged so­ci­ety and with a high­ly lever­aged Gov­ern­ment work­ing though a gross­ly in­ef­fi­cient pub­lic sec­tor. We have come out of sim­i­lar in the past via en­er­gy booms. An­oth­er one is un­like­ly. We have no demon­strat­ed ca­pa­bil­i­ty to take our­selves out of this po­si­tion. We should be anx­ious to get back to work all the while as­sid­u­ous­ly try­ing to in­crease our med­ical ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

I do not want any­one to die from C-19. But I al­so pray that your fu­ture lives, those of your chil­dren, your grand­chil­dren, your neigh­bour, your friends, co-work­ers are not de­stroyed in the process. You can’t go back in time and do it over. Think care­ful­ly about where you stand right now.

Please send your com­ments to ian@ian­nar­ine.com

In avoid­ing the des­per­a­tion that goes with a lack of suf­fi­cient hos­pi­tal beds we have em­braced the des­per­a­tion of not hav­ing enough food and the men­tal an­guish of di­min­ished sav­ings and the loss of liveli­hoods.